A related analogy I use when thinking about revision is from the old Will Smith vehicle “Independence Day.” In my probably inaccurate memory of that movie, a reptilian alien creature is held in a glass cage in a lab. It is sick or injured and needs to be treated. If you imagine the creature as a poem it will be clear that cutting into it in advance of serious and sustained and openminded watchfulness will result in destruction of important organs and perhaps in death. The poem-alien’s heart-equivalent, if it has one, might reside in its leftmost claw or in a magnetic communication between its antennae-like nipples.

I would like to proceed warily, with respect for anomalous life.